Turkey has added cryptocurrency trading platforms to its list of firms covered by anti-money laundering (AML) and terrorism financing regulation, Reuters reported.
A presidential decree expanded the rules early Saturday (May 1), and a local news report said the rules would be in effect immediately and cover “crypto asset service providers” making them liable for existing regulations, according to Reuters.
Turkey’s central bank last month banned the use of crypto for payments, citing concerns with the risk of the transactions, Reuters reported.
In the days after that, two Turkey-based crypto trading platforms were halted for separate investigations, according to Reuters. The investigation into one of them, Thodex, ended up leading to the jailing of six suspects.
In other news, Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger has called bitcoin “disgusting” and said it is “contrary to the interests of civilization,” CNBC reported.
“I don’t welcome a currency that’s so useful to kidnappers and extortionists and so forth, nor do I like just shuffling out of your extra billions of billions of dollars to somebody who just invented a new financial product out of thin air,” he said, per CNBC.
Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett, who had avoided a question on bitcoin earlier, said he didn’t have a response to Munger’s comments, according to CNBC.
Lastly, Fidelity Investments has rolled out Sherlock, a digital assets data and analytics solution, to put together comprehensive digital asset data, according to a press release.
Sherlock offers streamlined access to “fundamental and technical data about development ecosystems, network activity, trading, social media activity, news” and more.
Kevin Vora, vice president of Product Management for the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology (FCAT), said in the release that the reason the company is going forward with Sherlock is the increased interest in the crypto space, and investors had said there was a need for an easy data solution.
“That’s what we’re introducing with Sherlock — robust and insightful datasets paired with highly intuitive tools to help clients make data-driven digital asset investment decisions,” he said in the release.
